The morning of the observation! Thanks to my kitty, Oscar, I'm up early enough to update. Let's hope it goes well... After being in the classroom 815am-12, I will have to go straight to campus for 2 classes! What a fun day! (sarcasm).

I should really update more often, but I've just been so busy! Last Thursday I met the late afternoon 4th grade class and read my All About Me book to them. That class is a lot smaller than the homeroom morning class, and A LOT rowdier, but my partner and I are up for the challenge. We also got the chance to grade some homework and use our cooperating teacher's grade book last Thursday.

Today started our second week in the schools and I can confidently say I am still in love with the 4th grade. I am getting to know the late afternoon class better, which is helpful since I will be seeing them a lot! All weekend my partner and I have been working on our lesson (for tomorrow). Our cooperating teacher is awesome and gave us so many materials to work with, including the student's Social Studies book and her lesson plans from last year in the unit they are currently learning. We choose to do a lesson on the Lenni Lenape Indians and will go over text book vocab, have group work answering questions on a worksheet, class discussions and a fun traditional Lenni Lenape game! I hope it goes smoothly, we only have 35 minutes, and a lot to cover! We will be observed by our Internship professor, so it's a little stressful, but it's our first official lesson- so hopefully he'll be easy on us.

[For privacy purposes, I will use 'S' as my partner and Mrs. F as my cooperating teacher; just in case they don't want their names posted all over my blog.]

Mrs. F. gave me and S another project to due this week- a bulletin board! The students have been working on their sentence and paragraph structure and have read the book "Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree" . Our bulletin board will be displayed right outside of the classroom- and we have already put up a huge tree made out of paper. Tomorrow, we will fill in the leaves and branches with the student's work, and handmade leaves with their names on it! We are so thrilled to be able to contribute so much to the class in only our 2nd week. Pictures will follow! We have to collect pictures of most everything we do for our portfolio at the end of the semester. How annoying... but it will help us in the long run. Today in class we had the chance to talk to each student about the NJASK scores (a state-wide test the students took at the beginning of the year). It was sad to see that only a handful of students got passing grades, but I hope to see with my own eyes their improvement in the next few months.

Hopefully I'll get to update soon about how our first lesson went :)

first day!

So, I had my first day in the 4th grade today! I originally was supposed to have 5th grade, but last minute I was switched. The school I am teaching at is an Abbot School in Trenton. I was a little nervous at first going into the urban setting, but all my fears were extinguished the moment I walked into my classroom. The teacher told us right off the bat how strict she can be because the children need a lot of discipline, and that she may come across mean at first, but it’s tough love that the class needs. She also made us aware that there are only two students in the class that are on a 4th grade level, and everyone else is more near a 2nd or 3rd grade level. There are two autistic students in the class who get pulled out at various times during the day.

All the students were so smiley and so eager to learn and participated in activities. Me and my teaching partner we able to read our ‘All About Me’ books to the class, and they seemed to eat up all the information given to them! After journal writing and some other English work, the class moved across the hall to do Math. In math, almost all the students were struggling, but no one was afraid to ask for help. When helped, they were so thankful that we took the time one-on-one to explain and work with them. It was only the first day and I felt like I made such a difference. They thrived on the time focused on them, and they didn’t want me to walk away to help another student. The children in my class just really need to be loved and to have people not give up on their abilities.

I am reading The Freedom Writers Diaries for my Social Studies Methods class, and although that book dealt with high schoolers, I hope I can make an impact on these students. I have already connected with a few specific students and received many hugs and compliments in the short time that I was there today!

I know I will have a lot to write about during the semester, I hope I can keep up blogging about it to share with all of you. I’m trying to keep track of all the funny stories and anecdotes that happened today that I want to write about later, but as for now it’s 2pm and I haven’t eaten all day!

It is currently 6:30am, Tuesday September 16, 2009. I start my first day of student teaching 5th grade today, I don't know how I have time to blog this early in the morning when I should be getting ready and feeding the cat- but what's a blog if you don't update it?

I should really be working on lessons plans right now. I can guarantee that 90% of my posts will start with that exact statement. Do ‘real life’ teachers had to go through this painful process too? Coming up with pointless rationales and objectives for each little thing they do? Okay, I don’t want to get in trouble here. Rationales and objectives are anything but pointless when you’re dealing with the future generation, but do we honestly have to write them down word for word?

I guess I should introduce myself to the world wide web before I go on ranting about the one thing I’ve been dreaming to be since I was five. You can call me Miss Scott, as I assume that’s what I’ll be hearing the most these next few months. It took me a while to get where I am today. Two years at Seton Hall University and three at Rutgers. I graduated with a Communication degree and threw it away to land at The College of New Jersey to get a master in Education (MAT Program). – I didn’t really throw it away though, my diploma is framed on the wall, hanging above my television so I can remind myself of my worth every time I watch ‘Are you Smarter Than a 5th Grader’ (I never am, pathetic, right?). I started my journey at TCNJ this past summer with two classes: Exploring Teaching and Advanced Child Development. This semester I have five course: Internship I (which will become student teaching), Methods in Inclusive Science, Concepts and Methods in Teaching Mathematics in Elementary Grades, Multicultural and Social Studies Methods, and Language Arts and Literacy. I start student teaching 5th grade in Trenton this Wednesday and I couldn’t be more anxious. I can’t grasp if I’m more nervous or excited, but I guess I’ll let you know later this week.

Okay enough of business, and more of… not business? Who knows, I’ve been so overwhelmed with homework these past few weeks; I’m not sure if it’s the graduate school that’s kicking my ass, or the fact that I haven’t been in school full time in about two years. Either way, I’ve been swamped. Not to mention still desperately trying to hold onto my part-time job at The Olive Garden (but that’s another story for another day). I am also in the process of raising a 10 week old kitten, Oscar, who is truly my baby. I’ll probably talk about him a lot. He’s sleeping now- the main reason why I am actually able to type on my laptop without getting my hands pounced on. Needless to say he has devil / angel syndrome, which I pray he grows out of once he grows up and stays strictly angel.

Crap, I got off track again. Okay- back to business, or… well, whatever. Lesson plans will be the death of me. For the past week and a half my partner and I have been working on a lesson about Thanksgiving. Who would have thought doing a lesson on Thanksgiving would have taken so much thought and been so time consuming. The main assignment was to be able to come up with an inclusive lesson plan fit for both my graduate class level students, as well as TCNJ’s CCS students (Career and Community Studies; students with intellectual disabilities who receive a certificate at the end of their program). We finally completed it and did the lesson in front of the classes this past Thursday. It went well, but it's hard to teach inclusively!

Well, sorry to get this short; but I really must be working on some teacher stuff now.